Angola marks year without polio case
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Angolan baby gearing up for a polio vaccination
Angola has marked a year without a new case of polio, a disease that paralyzes children, the United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) announced on Friday.
According to the agency Angola had stopped the transmission of polio in 2000 but it was re-imported from India in 2005.
UNICEF says that laboratory results have confirmed that the last case of the poliovirus was a 14 month old child from Uige Province in the country's northwest in July 2011.
Koenraad Vanormelingen the UNICEF representative says the Angolan government has dealt with polio as a national emergency.
"As long as there is a case of polio anywhere in the world children remain at risk if they are not fully vaccinated against polio. The problem is that it's only one case that takes to re-infest the country and it cost the government and partners more than $300 million to get rid of it again over the period 2005 and 2012, a massive effort and more than 20 vaccination campaigns and case surveillance."
Duration: 25"
